This invention relates to mnemonic telephone dialing systems, and more particularly, to such telephone dialing systems useable in Asian language regions.
Conventional telephones usually include a dialing keypad with at least 10 keys associated with the digits 0 to 9, respectively. In addition, many of the keys are associated with alphabetic characters. In the United States the numerical keys 2 through 9 are associated with the 24 alphabet characters A through Y, minus Q. The presence of the alphabet characters on the keypad makes mnemonic telephone dialing possible. For example, the telephone number 1-800-366-4667 can be dialed using the easy to remember sequence 1-800-DOMINOS. Telephone numbers can easily be remembered through such word association and can therefore: be invaluable in advertising and product promotion.
Similar mnemonic systems by word association can be used in any Romance or Germanic language speaking country based on the 26 character Roman alphabet. The particular association of alphabetic characters with numerical digits may vary according to the language, but the basic concept of mnemonics by word association remains the same.
In Asian countries where the language is based on Chinese characters, such word association becomes virtually impossible. There are approximately 10,000 different Chinese characters. The educated Chinese will normally have a useful vocabulary of 2-3,000 characters. There does not appear to be any way of grouping the Chinese characters into a reasonable number of groups that could be associated with the 10 digit numerical keypad.